Madam Sapphira by Edgar Saltus

"I would rather have written Salammbô than have built the Brooklyn Bridge. It was more difficult, and besides it will last longer."

Mr. "Alphabet" Jones, the novelist, a thimbleful of champagne in his throat, was discoursing to the guests whom Mrs. Nevius had assembled.

"Yes, of course," interjected Mrs. Anderson, a young woman with the face and manner of a cocotte. "Ah, yes," and she smiled with an air entendu; "but does literature pay?"

With elaborate manifestations of bewilderment, Jones threw himself back in his chair.

"Pay, Mrs. Anderson? Pay, did I understand you to say? Why, look at Bradshaw. Year in, year out, he clears ten thousand pounds sterling."

"Bradshaw? Bradshaw? " Mrs. Anderson shook her head vaguely. "Oh, yes, the author of Ben Hur."

"Ce qu'elle est idiote," muttered Nevius to Miss Jenny Adulam, who sat at his side.

"Ce qu'elle m'ennuie," responded that young woman. But her eyes said more than the words conveyed: they complimented Mrs. Anderson with a look of absolute abhorrence.

"What is it? " Nevius asked, who had seen but not understood. "What has she done?"

"I can't tell you."

"But you must, Jenny."

"I can't; I told Hilda and that's enough."

"No, dear Mrs. Anderson," Jones was saying. "Not Ben Hur; you are thinking of Mr. Gunter. Bradshaw is the author of Rabelais, Tristram Shandy and The Bride of Lammermoor."

"Yes, yes of course, but then you see I thought he was dead."

"Not dead, dear Mrs. Anderson, and that is just the point I was seeking to convey. Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. But how well Scalchi sang last night. Don't you think her voice must have been changed in the cradle?"

From across the dinner-table Clayton Anderson, a fat man with a beard that concealed the total absence of chin, labored to the rescue of his wife.

"By the way, Jones, that was a nasty criticism the Saturday Review had of your book. Stupid sheet, isn't it?"

"Stupid? not a bit. Only the year before last it had a most excellent article on manure. It is admirably edited, I assure you."

"By gad," snorted Anderson, an appreciative smile on his sodden, good-natured, face. "If I had the editor's address I'd drop him a line and tell him what you say."

"Drop it in the sewer, it will get to him in time," Jones answered, and began anew at Anderson's wife.